NEWS ANALYSIS
The Battle Over What to Tell Americans About Drinking

Officials in other countries are warning about the health hazards of alcohol in any amount. Americans are still told that moderate drinking is safe. What gives?


The evidence against drinking has been evolving for years now. But that was not reflected in the last update of the U.S. Dietary Guidelines in 2020, and may not be in the 2025 revision either. Tamara Kenyon for The New York Times

By Roni Caryn Rabin
Jan. 1, 2025

A report that is intended to shape the next edition of the U.S. Dietary Guidelines has broken sharply with an emerging scientific consensus that alcohol has no health benefits. … The evidence review, by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in December, revived a once-dominant hypothesis that moderate drinking is linked to fewer heart attack and stroke deaths, and fewer deaths overall, compared with never drinking.

Many scientists now take issue with that view. And some fear that, based on the new analysis, the influential dietary guidelines may fail to address recent research into the harms of drinking. … The guidelines are revised once every five years, and there have been growing concerns about rising alcohol consumption in the United States in recent decades.

“This report is a thinly veiled effort to undo the growing evidence that alcohol causes cancer and is increasingly associated with serious health outcomes,” said Diane Riibe, who co-founded the U.S. Alcohol Policy Alliance, a nonprofit focused on the harms of alcohol. … The report did note a small but significantly heightened risk of breast cancer associated with moderate drinking, but said there wasn’t enough evidence to link moderate consumption to other cancers. The National Cancer Institute, among other scientific bodies, disagrees.

Alcohol producers “needed the informed national conversation to come to a screeching halt, because none of the current or emerging science says that moderate drinking may be healthier than not drinking,” Ms. Riibe said. … A spokeswoman for the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, Melissa San Miguel, declined to respond to that criticism.

{snip}

Roni Caryn Rabin is a Times health reporter focused on maternal and child health, racial and economic disparities in health care, and the influence of money on medicine. More about Roni Caryn Rabin

A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 2, 2025, Section A, Page 18 of the New York edition with the headline: Don’t Drink? Moderate Drinking is OK? A Fight Is Looming.. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe